If
any friend did read it in 1805, it cannot have been Ballantyne, and may
have been Erskine. But none of the paper bears a water-mark, between 1805
and 1813, so Scott must merely have taken it up, in 1810, as it had been
for five years. Now Scott says that the success of "The Lady of the
Lake," with its Highland pictures, induced him "to attempt something of
the same sort in prose." This, as Lockhart notes, cannot refer to 1805,
as the "Lady of the Lake" did not appear till 1810. But the good fortune
of the "Lady" may very well have induced him in 1810 to reconsider his
Highland prose romance. In 1808, as appears from an undated letter to
Surtees of Mainsforth (Abbotsford Manuscripts), he was contemplating a
poem on "that wandering knight so fair," Charles Edward, and on the
adventures of his flight, on Lochiel, Flora Macdonald, the Kennedys, and
the rest. Earlier still, on June 9, 1806, Scott wrote to Lady Abercorn
that he had "a great work in contemplation, a Highland romance of love,
magic, and war." "The Lady of the Lake" took the place of that poem in
his "century of inventions," and, stimulated by the popularity of his
Highland romance in verse, he disinterred the last seven chapters of
"Waverley" from their five years of repose.
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